Dr Paul Allen

English: Statue of William Tyndale in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) William Tyndale 's final words before the chain around his neck strangled him to death were, "Lord, open the king of England 's eyes." That dying prayer was answered two years after Tyndale's death, when King Henry VIII ordered that the Bible of Miles Coverdale was to be used in every parish in the land. The Coverdale Bible was largely based on Tyndale's work. Then, in 1539, Tyndale's own edition of the Bible became officially approved for printing. Tyndale's translation inspired the great translations that followed, including the Great Bible (1539, also compiled by Coverdale), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops' Bible (1568), the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609), and the Authorized or King James Version (1611). A complete analysis of the King James shows that Tyndale's words account for eighty-four percent of the New Testament and...

English: Postage stamp depicting Martin Luther, the initiator of the Protestant Reformation (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Many people might answer that question by pointing to Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. But if you were to ask Luther himself, he would not point to himself or his own writings. Instead, he would give all the credit to God and His Word. Near the end of his life, Luther declared: “All I have done is put forth, preach and write the Word of God , and apart from this I have done nothing. . . . It is the Word that has done great things. . . . I have done nothing; the Word has done and achieved everything.” Elsewhere, he exclaimed: “By the Word the earth has been subdued; by the Word the Church has been saved; and by the Word also it shall be reestablished.” Noting Scripture’s foundational place in his own heart, Luther wrote: “No matter what happens, you should say: There is God’s Word. This is my rock and anchor. On it I rely, and it remains. Where it remains, I, too,...

English: Fray Pedro Fernández Pecha, by Valdés Leal, 1656, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The sixteenth century in Europe was a century of church reform. Using the newly-invented printing press, many called the church to clean up its act. Martin Luther set reform blazing in Germany with pamphlets and a German Bible. William Tyndale issued the Bible and many booklets in English and died for it. John Calvin published a powerful theological work that won millions of followers. The very air seemed charged with new learning. Spain , too, had its champion of reformation--a freshman at the University of Alcalá. Juan Valdés was just eighteen years old on this day January 14, 1529when he published his Dialogue on Christian Doctrine . The work was not quite as he had planned. One of his professors cautioned him to make some changes so that he would not rouse the wrath of the Inquisition . Valdés agreed. Even so, the book was strongly Protestant in tone. What ...

The beginning verses of the Gospel of John, from a facsimile edition of William Tyndale's 1525 English translation of the New Testament. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Tim Challies (Author) The moment Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of the university chapel at Wittenberg, he set into motion a series of events that brought about a great Reformation. This Reformation would soon spread beyond Germany and as it did so, it would forever transform the Christian faith . One of the jewels of that Reformation is now in the collection of the British Library: William Tyndale ’s New Testament . It is the next of the twenty-five objects through which we are telling the history of Christianity. William Tyndale was born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, England . Born into a wealthy family he had the privilege of studying at Magdalen Hall, Oxford and at Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar who was soon fluent in eight languages. At Cambridge he studied theology, but r...

God's Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale (Image via RottenTomatoes.com) William Tyndale (ca. 1494–1536) made an enormous contribution to the Reformation in England . Many would say that he made  the  contribution by translating the Bible into English and overseeing its publication. One biographer, Brian Edwards, states that not only was Tyndale “the heart of the Reformation in England,” he “ was  the Reformation in England” (Edwards,  God’s Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale and the English Bible  [Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 1999], 170).  Because of his powerful use of the English language in his Bible, this Reformer has been called “the father of modern English” (N. R. Needham,  2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation  [London: Grace Publications, 2004], 379). John Foxe went so far as to call him “the Apostle of England” (John Foxe,  Foxe’s Book of Martyrs  [Nashville: Thomas Nel...